Originally posted by: Excelsior
Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Originally posted by: darfur
Originally posted by: Excelsior
What Gamingphreek said. I have the AV-710, and it is a nice card for the price.
For a HTIB, Id get this.
Gamingphreak also said that digital is digital. Will I see a difference with that sound card?
How ironic. I set up that exact same system for a friend a little while back.
I haven't tried onboard digital, but I suspect it's not really going to make any difference if you get a soundcard to do it.
It should be a lot harder to screw up digital out for a motherboard maker than it is to screw up analog out.
Yeah..I guess he would really be fine eitherway.
If he wants to get a card though, then the Chaintech is of course the way to go for a non DDL card :thumbsup:
Maybe try the onboard digital out and see if it sounds alright, darfur. If it's working well, then stick to it, but if not then the Chaintech gets my vote for standard digital out.
If you want to game on a HT set, be aware that you aren't going to get true surround sound from either the Chaintech, onboard (except for soundstorm), or audigy cards in digital mode. You will get surround for things that were Dolby Digitally encoded already (DVDs for example), but games will only output in stereo. You can still have it output to all your speakers by setting your receiver on a 5 channel stereo mode or Prologic II, but it's not going to give you true surround sound.
Alternatives are
hooking up via analog to a receiver with 6 or 8 channel direct input (generally HTIB sets wont have this)
or
getting a soundcard that does DDL like the X-Mystique or Montego.
(or just don't worry about it

)